Developing Arts
The development of arts in the game is based on what we call skills. Since the developers chose to hide the experience information from the player this can sometimes be very confusing, but understanding how they work is necessary to understand how arts are learned and developed. Basics Most Arts and some other actions (like regular attacks) have one or more skills associated with them which will increase when the Arts are used. Whenever a battle starts, skills are increased based on the commands given to the characters, and then further increased if/when the characters actually get to perform the command. This is important because half of the skill gains happens without actual fighting; characters will improve even if the enemies die before they get their turn. The base experience gained towards skills is 2, however there are two factors that can increase this: Battle Rank and Chain Count. The first one modifies the gained XP based on the BR difference between the party and the monsters. Unfortunately the amount is so small that it will get rounded down to 0 by the calculations unless the BR difference is 50 or greater in the monsters' favor (+50% experience), and is thus almost impossible to achieve. It should also be noted here that no amount of BR difference in the player's favor will lower the XP, so fighting lower level monsters is an effective way of gaining skills without raising BR. Next the Battle Chain is taken into account. Since the base XP is 2 this modifier gets rounded down to the nearest 50% as well: +50% experience from 220 chains, and +100% experience from 370 chains. Going any higher will not increase the modifier any further. This is calculated separately after the BR Bonus, which means a fraction of the BR Bonus is truncated and not added to a fraction of Battle Chain bonus. PC note: Only the first 30 turns of every battle will award Art/Skill XP. Stat XP award does not have a turn limit. Experience gained with skills in turn increases their level based on the following table. Note that these numbers are from the PC version of the game, the XBOX requirements may be slightly different. The Low Mystic Skills are Invocations, Evocations, and Hexes, and the High Mystic Skills are Remedies, Psionics, and Wards. Lotions requires significantly less experience for the first two levels than anything else, this is because its lowest rank art (Antivenin) is too situational, this enables characters with this skill to get past having to use this art to improve their skill level. The skill levels are used to determine what Arts a character is able learn, and what Classes he or she can change into. While most Arts only require a single skill, weapon specific Combat Arts require both a Wield Style and a Weapon Type skill. Weapon Arts, while classed as Special Arts, are also learned with a Wield Style and a Weapon Type skill. Influencing Class changes often requires some knowledge of the skill levels, unfortunately finding them out without seeing the numbers can be quite difficult. There are two ways to do this based on the list of arts that can be viewed on the character screen. The simple way is to find the highest ranked art which requires the given skill and look up the level required for it. This is useful at the beginning of the game and for low level skills, but is not very accurate since there can be multiple level gaps between the art ranks. The more precise method is to look up each individual art level belonging to a skill, find out the amount of xp required to obtain them, and then add these together to get an approximate value of the skill experience. Unfortunately neither of these methods can account for weapon/wield style changes and Rush's mystic chance, but they are usually accurate enough to determine mystic/item/weapon skill correlation, which is an important factor for changing classes. Combat Arts Learning Combat Art learning is based on two skill categories: Wield Styles, and Weapon Types. Both of those skills are improved by performing Combat Arts, or Weapon Arts, but only the Wield Style is improved by regular attacks (instead they give XP to the weapons, which leads to the +1, +2 etc weapons). For weapon types this is always straightforward, the experience is gained with the weapon type used. Wield Styles, on the other hand, are a little trickier. The XP gained at the start of a battle is based on the Wield Style the character is in when the turn begins, however the XP gained when an action is performed is based on the Wield Style used to perform it. On the XBOX version characters start every battle with the default Wield Style for their equipped weapon, while the PC version lets the player specify the default wield style for everyone. The skill level requirements for learning Combat Arts are as follows: Development Performing Combat Arts not only increases the respective wield and weapon skills, but also gives art specific experience. When this experience reaches certain levels, the art is upgraded, which usually means improved damage and/or speed statistics, and at every odd tier a reduced AP cost. As with learning, the XP required for an art to upgrade depends on its Rank: Power / Technique Styles * Power Style refers to what is commonly known as Strength modifier * Technique Style refers to what is commonly known as Speed modifier Combat Arts can also be modified for greater power or technique precision. This is represented by positive or negative experience levels or officially as Art Direction Experience, with the positive direction being Power Style (Mighty/Peerless), and the negative direction being Technique Style (Nimble/Swift). Thus, the base XP for Combat Art direction is either +2 or -2. This value is defined by the individual weapon used to perform the art. Some weapons develop faster arts, some develop stronger ones. The experience required to reach the specific art levels is: * Mighty/Nimble: ± 85 XP * Peerless/Swift: ± 577 XP The XP gained towards art direction is calculated the same way as any other skill-related experience and is thus affected by the same factors. However, since it's a bi-directional system, changing to a weapon that gives a different modifier cannot modify the art in the other direction until the previous modification is undone (XP reaches 0). For those using the Dual Wield style, it should be noted that mixing the Power and Technique modifiers is not recommended as both equips are taken into account for determining the direction and magnitude of the gains. X360: On the X360, mixing the modifiers cancels out directional XP no matter the combination used. In addition, using Power or Speed weapons in both slots does not improve the XP rate. PC: On the PC, Power weapons in the off hand do not contribute Art Direction Experience, but Technique weapons still do. This means that dual-wielding two Technique weapons will attach a Speed modifier twice as fast, but dual-wielding two Power weapons will attach a Strength modifier at the normal rate. Additionally, using a Power weapon in the main hand with an off hand Technique weapon will result in 0 directional XP, whereas a main hand Technique with off hand Power will attach the Speed modifier at a normal rate. Category:Game Mechanics Mystic Arts Learning Mystic Arts, unlike Combat Arts, start with the first art already learned when a mystic skill is obtained, this could be considered the "regular attack" of the skill, even though it's not always an offensive spell. The learning and development of Mystic Arts is governed by a system called Mystic Chance. The most notable difference between this and the other arts is that Mystic Chance only allows one art to be learned or upgraded in a single battle, and this is always done after the battle. To learn or upgrade a Mystic Art, the character first has to trigger a Mystic Chance. Gaining a level in a mystic skill always triggers a Mystic Chance. Using any Mystic Art gives a 5% / 15% chance of triggering one depending on whether it is just put into the command chain or actually executed, and gaining enough experience in an individual art to make it available for upgrading also gives a 80% chance. Only one Mystic Chance can occur per character per battle though, even if multiple events would trigger it. Once a Mystic Chance has been triggered, a list of available arts is built by the game. If there are any arts with enough experience to upgrade, they will be added to this list first. Arts whose mystic rank (see table below) matches that of the highest known one will also be available if the skill requirement is met. To learn an art of a new mystic rank all arts from the previous rank must be learned, and one of them needs to be at least Tier II. Wind Shear + Double Time II for example qualifies for Caustic Blast if the skill level is at least 6. If there are no arts meeting any of the above criteria, there is still a small (5%) chance that an already known art (picked randomly) will be available for upgrading, but otherwise the Mystic Chance is wasted and nothing is learned. Arts improved by this random chance will get their art XP readjusted to the new art level. For Rush, the Arts available in a Mystic Chance will be displayed on the screen and the player is allowed to choose which art to learn or upgrade. For any other character the game will randomly select an art from the list. The skill level requirements for learning new Mystic Arts can be seen in the table below. Since the mystic rank is often different from the art's displayed rank, the individual arts are listed as well. Development The upgrading of Mystic Arts is done through the same Mystic Chance system that handles learning them. Like the other arts, they still need a certain amount of experience to upgrade, which is gained the same way: through using the art. However they are not automatically upgraded when the experience reaches the required level, instead they can trigger a Mystic Chance. Arts that have enough experience to upgrade cannot gain any further XP until upgraded, this also means that they only have the base 5% chance for triggering Mystic Chance at this point. The individual art experience required for upgrades is based on the mystic ranks of the arts. Remedies use a different progression than the other arts, they are listed in a separate table: For upgrading arcana, it is not necessary to progress through tiers individually if the appropriate triggering art is known. For example, if Mixed Message V is known, Fatal Eclipse V can be learned without progressing through II, III, IV. Item Arts Learning Similar to Mystic Arts, the first Art in the Item Art categories is automatically learned when a character obtains the skill, but any subsequent ones are unlocked by improving it. Unlike Combat and Mystic Arts, which all expend AP when used, Item Arts use items called Consumables instead. Because of this, item skills are very easy to improve as long as the player has the necessary funds to supply the consumables. The higher rank Item Arts consequently require more expensive materials to use. Most item skills use uniform skill requirements for new art learning, the only exception being Traps, which has one less art to learn than the others, and its final art is also obtainable sooner. Development Using Item Arts also gives experience to the individual art, which is used to upgrade the art. Upgraded item arts usually do more damage or healing, but more importantly they take less consumables to use. Unfortunately the duration of buffing arts (Potions, Wards) does not increase with these upgrades, but most Potions arts improve an additional stat at higher tiers (IV-V). As with learning, the XP required for an art to upgrade depends on its Rank: Weapon Arts Weapon Arts are Special Arts related to specific weapons in the game. Unlike regular arts, they only have one level and do not gain individual art experience. The reason they are still included here is that they are learned the same way as Combat Arts: by meeting a Wield Style and Weapon Type skill requirement. Unlike regular arts, they are not actually "learned", but rather "unlocked" when the requirements are met and the weapon they are related to is equipped. They can appear in the battle summary as having been "learned", but only if the required weapon is equipped when the skill requirements are met. Otherwise they will simply appear in the art list upon equipping the weapon. There are several different requirement categories for learning Weapon Arts, as shown in the tables below. While the stronger arts usually require higher skills, this is not always the case. Arts only usable by specific races are listed separately for an easier overview of the Weapon Arts available to Rush. Category:Game Mechanics